Chapter 9 Resources
Bullying and Mental Illness
ADVICE
Bullying fits into the category of “Toxic Relationships” because it is an unhealthy relationship that takes a toll on your mental and emotional wellbeing. However, bullying is in a special category of its own because it involves sustained and intentional overt or covert manipulations designed to beat you down for the purpose of the bully getting something they want.
There are classroom bullies and workplace bullies and they can detrimentally affect an entire group of people causing great harm to the individuals they target as well as closing off any possibility of the satisfaction that comes from successful learning and/or genuine collaboration and teamwork.
Workplace, schoolyard and cyber-bullying is not uncommon and can cause grave psychological harm to the recipient and the onlookers.
My own experiences with being bullied came from a neighborhood bully when I was a child. This bullying occurred periodically and I had no idea how it was impacting my self-esteem until I attended therapy and made the connection between that experience and the experience of being bullied in my job years later.
My boss often demeaned me in front of others and I felt powerless to speak up, just as I couldn’t speak up as a child being bullied. I couldn’t think clearly while it was happening and I didn’t think anyone would listen or care about what I had to say because of the power differential that existed. After all, the boss was from a national corporate office and much higher up on the totem pole than me.
The anxiety became unrelenting because no matter how hard I tried, I felt powerless to stand up to him. The resulting stress affected the quality of my work, causing more anxiety and pressure. I found out that when an underlying mental illness meets active bullying, the results can be profound, even deadly.
For more information and resources on how to cope with bullying, please check out the following resources.
Resources
The Effects of Bullying / Stop Bullying.gov
https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/effects
Workplace Bullying
file:///Users/public1/Downloads/Workplace%20Bullying%20(1).pdf
(THIS LINK IS BROKEN)
